Summertime, and the living is...

As I sat in a stuffy office park yesterday afternoon, trying to focus on the computer screen in front of me, all I could wrap my brain around was the incessant sound of a little insect, chirping its vibratory call through the panes of glass that failed to keep the outdoors out.

As the cicadas hummed their waxing and waning tune, the work at hand began fading in lieu of a reminiscent image from my youth.

Long shadows stretch across the August lawn, as a young boy stretches his wiry limbs through the cool grass. The verdant blades are showing the incipience of seeds, despite the mother of the boy and her persistent calls for a gas-powered solution to a grasshoppers paradise.

The sugar maples are ablaze with crimson and fuchsia in the front yard, and the oak trees are sending off dry sepia helicopters by the gravel alleyway that borders the back.

As time drags an orange sun beneath the horizon, the boy realizes that he cannot remain supine in this neglect-propagated meadow forever. While his two arms remain folded behind his head, two analogous arms on some unseen eternal clock move him further into the inevitable future of learning, growing, failing, loving, stretching, loathing, and succeeding.

And I'm back in a sterile office park, still trying to focus on the task at hand. Whether it's success or failure, I may never know.

It's Hot, but Not Monotonous

Earlier this week, as my wife and I took a stroll through our neighborhood in an attempt to escape the humidity of our poorly-ventilated apartment, our discussion wandered to talk of the trip we took last summer to Paris. It was hot.

Everywhere we went, people were apologizing, saying that this was the most unseasonably hot weather that Paris had seen in decades. And we got to experience it in all its sweaty, humid, un-air conditioned glory.

So as we walked through the cool residential streets near our apartment, we reflected back on that trip. Despite the heat, I will say that the trip was amazing. Melting in Paris is still better than relaxing in Iowa (no offense Iowa). So I went back to the archives and pulled out this footage of one of the more unique moments in our trip.


When in Paris, Watch out for Glass Boxes
 

Not only was it awesome to see a MIME IN PARIS, but this guy was pretty talented. To bad he got shut down by the man.

We need more street performers in the USA. Especially mimes.

Hotter than Blazes

My car thermometer read ninety three degrees as I turned the key in the ignition this afternoon. The thick air in the vehicle was swirled with hot jet-streams that pushed stale atmosphere through the anxious vents.

Summer has arrived in the Midwest.

I don't like to complain about the weather. As a native Iowan, I see it as a badge of honor to weather the atmospheric bi-polarity of our region.

But as an Iowan, I also have an inherent tendency to discuss the weather with people I meet. My wife hates it. I guess it comes from my agrarian heritage, where weather patterns affect your livelihood.

So when I stopped by the Downtown Grocery for a mid-afternoon refreshment today, made small talk with the polite Middle Eastern man who held the door for me.

The gentleman works at the store, and I've chatted with him many times as I stop in to grab a candy bar or Arnold Palmer Tallboy. As he followed me into the dingy convenience store, I joked,

Cool and Refreshing

"You open doors for your customers now too? Should I tip for that?"

"Oh no! I was just finishing my cigarette."

I wiped my brow and, in iconic Iowan fashion, retorted,

"It's almost hot enough to give up that habit, I'd say."

He just smiled and said,

"This is nothing! Try smoking in one hundred twenty degrees!"

Upon further inquiry, I learned that this gentleman was born in Dubai.

"The winters in Dubai are as the spring here - sixty, seventy degrees. Two, three, four o'clock, you cannot even leave your house. It is too hot!"

So to all those who are swooning at this unseasonably warm weather, take it from a man who has become thick skinned toward these Iowa summers.

In a way, my Downtown Grocery acquaintance has assimilated well to the rough Iowa approach to atmosphere. Shrug off the extreme weather, as it is always more intolerable somewhere else.

Just don't talk to him about the snow and ice. I'm afraid he may not be so tolerant in January.